Comment by niklasrde
10 hours ago
There are e2ee chats. There are some parties/politicians who want to get rid of them, but so far they are proposals. If/when these things go beyond committee stage, politics and democracy need to do their job and be sensible.
PATRIOT, FISA and Bush's surveillance programme imho give more powers to certain agencies today already than are codified in EU law.
> PATRIOT, FISA and Bush's surveillance programme imho give more powers to certain agencies today already than are codified in EU law.
This is not true. Whether you believe that FISA courts have teeth, or whether 3 letter agencies abide by the law, in most of Europe you do not even have the pretense of this. UK/FR and to a lesser extent DE are all much worse.
The worst parts of Patriot Act were undone in 2015, and the "F" in FISA stands for "Foreign". Europe continues to push policies like Chat Control and attempt to backdoor/ban E2E encryption for domestic surveillance.
The present day and trajectory in Europe is far far more grim than in the US.
> Europe continues to push policies like Chat Control and attempt to backdoor/ban E2E encryption for domestic surveillance.
Let's not forget that Chat Control is pushed by US non-profit Thorn, and implemented by software that this non-profit develops! Furthermore, if you look at how this software actually works (even in "self-hosted" setup it sends hash values to Thorn's servers [1]), it's pretty clear that this tech could easily be abused to perform surveillance on the EU from within the US.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260721220432/https://get.safer...
> Europe continues to push policies like Chat Control and attempt to backdoor/ban E2E encryption
Some politicians in Europe push for that, until now it has been refused by the others. Unlike in the US, there are many different parties in European countries. And Europe is made of politicians from many parties from many countries.
> The worst parts of Patriot Act were undone in 2015
So the NSA doesn't do any kind of domestic surveillance anymore, is that what you believe?
> the "F" in FISA stands for "Foreign". [...] Europe continues to push policies [...] for domestic surveillance.
So if it's surveilling allies, it's all good in your opinion?
> The present day and trajectory in Europe is far far more grim than in the US.
"Far far"? Do you even realise that Europe is not one single country? The US elected Trump, twice.
>> Some politicians in Europe push for that, until now it has been refused by the others. Unlike in the US, there are many different parties in European countries. And Europe is made of politicians from many parties from many countries. > And yet neither party in the US is pushing for it...
This is a bad retort. The U.S. has 2 relevant parties. Most countries in the EU have at least twice as many relevant parties and there are over 25 countries in Europe, so you’re looking at close to 100 relevant parties.
Yes, I am an American living in Europe. I have pretty good insight into all of this.
> Some politicians in Europe push for that, until now it has been refused by the others. Unlike in the US, there are many different parties in European countries. And Europe is made of politicians from many parties from many countries.
And yet neither party in the US is pushing for it...
> So the NSA doesn't do any kind of domestic surveillance anymore, is that what you believe?
Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Or if you believe this without evidence, do you have any evidence this is not occurring in Europe?
> So if it's surveilling allies, it's all good in your opinion?
Lol, lmao even. Yes, of course it is. Allies spy on each other. The Europeans do it to each other massively and have done since the dawn of Europe. Good lord, go read some history.
> "Far far"? Do you even realise that Europe is not one single country? The US elected Trump, twice.
Again, I live in Europe. I am well aware, but thanks for the classic European condescension. I don't like Trump. But how has he weakened privacy rights? And yes, beacause I don't want to write dozens of caveats for each teeny tiny member state, I consider Europe to be dominated by happenings in DE + FR + UK. I don't care what Latvia does.
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E2EE are are alive for maybe a few more years tops, until Chat Control 2.0 is voted in. ADDW enables mandatory spying camera in every new car. EU AI act allows AI surveillance without any court order (the only tiny useless hurdle is to record video first and then observer can use AI on the records at will). eIDAS2 allows legal MITM browser certificate attacks. Media Freedom Act (duh) allows deploying spyware against journalists in cases of "national security", as usual vague and undefined. And the list goes on.
Modern day EU, over the past 5 years or so is just as bad anti-privacy as USA, for no clear benefit too. Just surveillance for surveillance sake.
> but so far they are proposals
That is false. They are not proposals, they are being actively discussed in trilogues which is way way past proposal stage.
Chat control V2 trilogue negotiation was last week and it included mass scanning of messages and private data. Thankfully the EU parliament rejected the idea but every 6 months like clockwork it comes back. The next trilogue is in November.
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-trilogue-u...
If this was passed, it would force every single cloud provider and e2e chat provider to keep, filter and pass on your private information to Europol and other security agencies.
The trilogues are the standard informal step when the Commission submits a proposal. It remains a proposal until it is rejected or approved. The formal next step after submitting a proposal is the Parliament’s first reading [0], which hasn’t concluded yet (the Parliament hasn’t adopted a position yet). So it’s still in the proposal stage.
[0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Consolidated_version_of_the_T...
Quote:
1. Where reference is made in the Treaties to the ordinary legislative procedure for the adoption of an act, the following procedure shall apply.
2. The Commission shall submit a proposal to the European Parliament and the Council.
First reading
3. The European Parliament shall adopt its position at first reading and communicate it to the Council.
[many more items]
Item 3 hasn’t happened yet.